


i do all my own healing (manage all my feelings)

by somniatoressinespe



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: Enjoy!, F/F, Underage Drinking, a bit of a character study, a bit of me wanting good things for ellie chu, and general avoidance of sleep, as is the rule of every college student
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24410230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somniatoressinespe/pseuds/somniatoressinespe
Summary: Ellie doesn’t expect the first letter to arrive.(She doesn’t expect for them to keep coming either and yet.)or "ellie goes to college but that doesnt mean she can leave aster behind"
Relationships: Ellie Chu & Paul Munsky, Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 53
Kudos: 312





	i do all my own healing (manage all my feelings)

**Author's Note:**

> i know its not deanoru... amazed me too

Ellie still found herself being sceptical about love, even after the whole Dear Aster Flores thing.

She’s been watching movies about love with her father since she was thirteen and they’d never impressed her much. She _knows_ love isn't like in those movies- she doesn’t think she would want it if it was like that. Too big, too theatrical a thing.

And if she were to be honest it wasn’t even that, that annoyed her most. It was how everyone knew what they wanted, in those movies, how every gesture had to be grander than life, how you had to stop a car, a train, a wedding- and yes, she can see the irony there. It just wasn’t a love meant for ordinary people. 

And for as different Ellie was in Squahamish, she was pretty ordinary in the actual world.

Then with Aster… love was about deceiving if you were to ask Wilde, but she doesn’t think that was quite what he intended. 

Love.

(Aster.)

She wants to scoff at herself at the notion of the thought.

She doesn’t think herself a shallow person but. But love isn’t quite the word that comes to mind when she thinks of her. Infatuation, maybe- or maybe she’s too cynical. But it certainly felt very close to it. To love.

She doesn’t know.

She doesn't want to begin to know, yet.

She just knows she had liked how Aster could keep up with her, how she had always something disarmingly thoughtful to say, how she had the most _presence_ Ellie had ever witnessed in a person.

(Ocean of thoughts she could drown in. And sweet eyes. And sweet lips.)

(In the end, she’s no better than Paul.)

She thinks that there’s some truth- all of it, really- in what Paul’s said. How love was about effort, about putting the work in. 

Paul had put the work with her, and she can’t help the smile at the thought. He still does put the work, and she doesn’t think she would have ever had the courage to head to Iowa without him. Without the guarantee that someone would have been there for her father.

And the whole Aster thing… It was easy at first, to not let herself think about her. To ignore how pretty she was, how smart she was- one of the only ones who could honestly say had never used Ellie’s services- how _different_ she was.

Different like her.

(Not even the preacher’s daughter, not even the steady girlfriend of the Big Guy, not even one so firmly perched on Mt. Popularity, could leave behind her otherness in Squahamish. It’s not like they would ever let you.)

Different unlike her, too.

(Her voice was- is- hauntingly beautiful- and that's the first thing Ellie had noticed the first morning in Choir what was almost four years ago. She hadn't been paying attention- not to her and not to many things, not since her mom… she had noticed her, though.) 

Only that’s not quite right. 

It was easier _at first_ , is what Ellie means. Until Paul had run after her bike, hotdog in one hand and a letter in the other. 

It used to be easy.

And then it wasn’t.

It certainly doesn’t feel easy now, but she’s on a train for the first time in forever. She’s _going_ somewhere, she’s actually going somewhere.

(Some part of her is sure she’s going to be just fine, going to be even better than that.)

**

Ellie can't sleep.

It's way past midnight- way past a sensible bedtime- and Ellie can't sleep. 

The train moves with its usual train noises, the moon silently follows it in its race, and two other people are passed out in their bunks. And Ellie can't sleep.

And, okay, maybe Ellie had never been a good sleeper in the first place, what, with the train schedules and with the being a teenager thing. But this was a new level even for her.

Usually, it didn't much bother her. Usually. She's a bit annoyed by it now, though, as she scrolls through phone for anything entertaining enough to distract her.

Distract her from the lack of sleep she was getting. Distract her from stubborn thoughts of Aster.

The results are disappointing on both fronts, she has to say.

She ends up on Paul's and her last conversation, a wall of text that mostly consisted of incomprehensible emojis and Ellie's updates on her trip and the number of dumplings left in the icebox.

Her fingers hover over the only other text conversation she has on her phone. One she hasn't touched in months, now. 

She wonders if Aster's fingers ever hover over a similar spot.

(Love is memory, too, Ellie thinks, and that’s most of the tragedy, isn’t it?)

(Remembering and remembering and not being able to forget a single detail.)

She locks her phone and takes off her glasses, placing both in the compartment by her head. She turns in the bunk, turning away from the moonlight streaming into the train compartment from a badly closed curtain.

She was being stupid.

Ellie had known all too well, at the time, that she was living on borrowed time, that she was only subsiding for Paul, but during those weeks- the letters, the murals, the texts- well, she couldn’t have brought herself to care.

She wonders if Aster had cared, then. She wonders if Aster cared now.

(That it wasn’t Paul behind those letters. That it wasn’t Paul behind those texts.)

(That it was Ellie.)

She supposes it doesn’t matter, now.

Ellie closes her eyes.

**

She doesn't sleep.

**

Turns out, college is loud. Like, Paul’s house at dinner kind of loud. 

Not even twenty minutes in and she already knows it’s going to be a while before she adjusts to it.

She’s not used to it.

She’s used to quiet dinners with her dad, to long evenings waiting for the trains in her father’s booth, to the soft sound of her guitar.

It’s almost too much, as she hauls her bags across the hallways trying her best not to bump in all the other wide-eyed freshmen.

 _‘These hallways are murder’_ , kind brown eyes and- she shakes her head. She thinks then- only for a second, but a single second is more than enough- of how that day in the hot springs, they had talked for hours, but they had also enjoyed the quiet. 

She already misses the quiet.

She misses her. 

(And it’s so stupid.)

She misses Paul, and Ba, and even the shocks she felt in the earth as the trains had come blaring by each morning, each evening- always passing through, never taking anyone with them. Until she had left with it six days ago.

She misses her most of all. 

(Moronic, really.)

She manages to get to her door and open it with only minor issues. She sets the bags down with as little crashing as she can manage. She straightens up and faces the four, bare, white walls that will be her room for the time being.

She kinda misses the low ceilings of her attic, a bit, how they used to put her at ease. A lot of things in Squahamish used to put her at ease. Maybe Mrs G was right, she needed a shock in her life. 

She wanted to be more like her mother used to be.

She shakes her head and puts herself to work, making her bed with fresh sheets that still smelled of home, and putting her clothes in a small drawer that definitively wasn’t cleaned by the last person who had used it, and putting her whiteboard up on the door and scribbling her usual checklist on.

(And Grindell might not have been a full ride, but at least she didn’t have a roommate, so, really, she was already winning at college in her opinion.)

She’s only just done when her phone rings. 

Figures, not even ten seconds of silence and Paul’s ruining it already. “Hello?”

“Are you ready for this?” his voice answers back, in his best impression of her own.

She feels the corners of her mouth lift in what could be considered a smile if you squinted. 

“Yes,” she humours him.

“I said,” Paul says in his normal voice, before going back to the poor imitation of her own, and Ellie almost lets a laugh escape her lips, “Are. You. Ready. For. This?”

“Sir, yes sir,” she answers gruffly back. 

She’s rewarded by his goofy laugh. “Hell yeah! How’s the dorm?”

“It’s fine,” she shrugs even though he can’t see her, “Small.” 

“Did you meet your roomie yet?” Paul asks, hardly deterred by now by her terseness.

She sits down on her bed, back to the wall and facing the door. She should probably add her schedule somewhere on the board, too. 

“I don’t have one. I’m not a people person, remember?”

“Right,” and she swears she can almost hear his eyes roll, “Did you put up any pictures?”

She decides to toss him a bone. 

“I don’t have any,” she says- and there’s her mother picture, but that she had left in her guitar case, she couldn’t bear to separate the two- “I put up my whiteboard though.”

“Your whiteboard?” Paul says, and Ellie knows he’s judging her a bit.

“What?”

“It’s… old-fashioned.”

 _Like letters,_ she thinks but doesn’t say out loud.

“So?”

“And _you_ made fun of my letter,” Paul teases and she isn't even annoyed by it- she’s too glad to hear a familiar voice after the six days of travel it took to get to Grindell.

“Dear Aster Flores,” she mocks, rolling her eyes even if he can’t see her do it, “It was a terrible letter.”

“I’m not good with words.”

Paul’s voice is kind of small when he defends himself. Ellie squints her eyes shut. Moron. 

“No. That’s why you have me. You’re good with people, though.”

“Yeah, and you suck. Is that why the single?”

She makes an affronted noise that Paul only answers to with a laugh.

“And I thought whiteboards were _our_ thing, anyway.”

“You’re not that special,” Ellie says, even if it’s a lie and they both know it, “I’m sure you don’t miss our cramming sessions.”

“Not much. But I miss you.”

“Dude,” she breathes out, but Paul just laughs.

“I do,” he says again, without seemingly an inch of embarrassment at his own words. That, Ellie thinks, she’ll never get used to.

“You don’t just come out and say it though.”

“Why not?”

 _Yeah, Ellie,_ a voice taunts in her head, _why not?_

“You just don’t.”

“Okay,” Paul says, and Ellie can picture his dopey smile and the way he would shrug his shoulders, “Did you talk to anyone yet?”

It takes her a second to understand what he’s asking her, a second longer to answer. “It’s been like five minutes since I got here.”

“Well, did you?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Because it’s college?” Paul asks his voice doing that weird little tilt at the end that always made Ellie think she had made some terrible social faux pas.

“And?”

“It’s made for meeting people?”

She frowns because that’s just plain wrong. “It’s made for learning.”

“And meeting people,” he insists, his voice slowed down as if he was talking to a kid.

She rolls her eyes, gets kind of annoyed he can't see it. “Sure, whatever.”

“Don’t be a wuss.”

“I’m not a wuss!”

“Sure,” she hears muffled shouting in the background and then Paul groan, “Hey, I gotta go, but I’ll send some pictures of us for you in the mail.”

“Why?”

“I’m coming!” she hears him shout back to the voice, before his own lowers down again, “Because you don’t have any. Okay bye, love you.”

She barely has the presence of mind to say ‘love you’ back, and as soon as she does, he’s already gone.

Paul always felt like a small tornado, pushing behind her walls and gone before she’s able to realize what kind of breach he had caused. His casual kindness was something almost foreign to her.

She doesn’t have much time to think about it, though, because her stomach awakens all of the sudden and she’s forced to brave the loud cafeteria for the first time.

(The food isn't all that bad, but she finds a craving for Paul’s weird braised pork sausage hybrid.)

(Then again, it might just be the sleep deprivation talking.)

**

Ellie’s three weeks in and she’s getting better and better at finding the right buildings for each of her classes, at debating her points with other students for maybe the first time in her life- she thinks she wins most of them and, really, Mrs G would be proud. 

She likes that there are people who want to argue against her. She likes that there are people who want to argue with her, too.

Ellie is kinda nailing this college thing if you ask her. And okay, she still has to make a single friend, but she doesn’t feel lonely. At all. Not like she used to feel anyway.

And when she does feel homesick, when she misses Paul and her father, she calls one of them- and almost always finds the other together with him, weirdly- or streams one of those unbearably moronic movies on her computer.

Or she rereads one of his letters.

Because after those first pictures had come through…

(One is of the two of them in front of their train, one is of her and her dad at graduation she didn’t know he had even taken, and another, bigger, is of his face, that picture of their senior yearbook with the bold white letters ‘HE PUT US ON THE BOARD’ poorly photoshopped in.)

(She had put each one up on her walls, right next to her bed.)

After, well. She hadn't expected for anything to keep coming.

But Paul had kept writing to her. 

And even though his letters are mostly made of ramblings about taco sausages half of the time and of boring Squahamish things the other, she finds herself _waiting_ for each one because she misses him more than she expected to. 

She scoffs at herself. 

Moron.

Anyway, Ellie doesn’t expect the first letter to arrive.

(She doesn’t expect for them to keep coming either and yet.)

She just goes to do her regular weekly check hoping for one of Paul’s letters in her mailbox one morning and finds it there. She doesn’t even pay notice to it at first as she smiles at the thought of Paul trying to find a quiet place to sit down in with a ripped notebook page. 

But there’s another letter, too, white and unassuming and harmless. 

At least, until she turns it over and finds Aster’s name written in careful letters on the back. She almost drops the mailbox’s keys in her hand and fully drops the letter in her other. 

She watches the letter on the ground. She doesn’t know what to do. She shakes her head at herself and reaches for it. It’s a letter. The letter is just a letter.

It isn't.

She decides to stop being a wuss and picks it up, shoving it in her jacket’s pocket with Paul’s letter and marches back to her dorm.

She’s never been happier to have ended up in a single.

She shoves her jacket off and then scrambles after it when she realizes the letters are still inside her pocket.

She reads Paul’s first.

She swears she reads it first.

Did she read it at all?

But then Aster’s letter is in her hands and she’s sitting on the floor, reading it. Aster’s handwriting is familiar by now, she tries not to think why it is. 

(How Ellie had hurt her, how Aster had hurt Paul to hurt her, how Ellie had hurt Paul and he had hurt her back- a fucked-up chain of hurting.)

The letter itself is… weird- for the lack of a better word. Unexpected, maybe. Surprising, for sure.

The first thing she notices is how weird it is reading her own name at the top, and how weird it is knowing that Aster knows _Ellie’s_ the one she’s writing to, and how weird it is the way it’s terribly honest, still. She thought she had lost all rights to honesty with Aster. 

She’s… glad she hasn’t.

It’s so similar to the letters she used to get from her months ago, that it feels like no time has passed at all, only. 

Only.

(Only Aster is writing to _her_.)

(Only Aster had kissed her back.)

And it’s like any other letter she has ever gotten from Aster- it starts with her name, though, her _name_ \- and Ellie would have been happy with just that. 

But there’s something scribbled out near the end, something crossed over multiple times, but not enough that Ellie can’t make out what it’s written. She tries not to think of it.

(I don’t know if this is weird to say, but I wanted to thank you. ~~For the kiss.~~ For everything.)

The more she tries not to think of it, the more she does.

She doesn’t know if she’s meant to write back. She doesn’t know if she wants to write back. She doesn’t know what she wants.

There was a part of her that almost wanted to leave Aster in that afternoon light forever, that wanted to hold on to that last second before she broke the kiss off forever- but there was some other part of her that just wanted her.

Which was... unwise.

And Ellie still has her Ghost Messenger handle, so she could… she shakes the thought out of her head.

No.

She actually _hates_ that she’s even considering this.

Nope.

She’s not doing this.

(Oh god, she’s doing it.)

 **SmithCorona:** _Letters, really? I thought we evolved past that._

She hates that she stands and waits until Aster textes her back, too.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Write me back._

She waits for something else to come through, but it doesn’t.

(And well, what else is she supposed to do?)

**

It’s different writing to Aster again, but also isn't.

It isn't as easy, for one thing, writing to her now.

She thinks it’s because it suddenly feels like there’s more at stake now. It was one thing to write to Aster pretending to be Paul- or a more intellectual version of him, she guesses- it was another completely to sign with her own name. 

And she knows that’s all it takes to make it feel so different because back then she could almost pretend she was just playing a part. The perfect, interesting, nice guy. Now she has to be herself, and it’s horrifying.

She thinks of street musicians, of street artists, who blend into the background of cities so well you don’t expect them to be actual people- just entities, avatars of the city itself.

She thinks of how she’s been fading into the background for so long, writing her name on the top of a page feels like the act of baring oneself in front of a million people.

(Anonymity, a better chance at being themselves.)

She’s trying to figure out how to write back to Aster when she meets her first friend at college. 

(Aster, I don’t think I know how to write to you without pretences. And if you were here, I don’t think I’d know how to talk to you either. ~~I think I could still kiss you, though. I don’t think I know how not to.~~ )

She scratches the whole thing out the moment it leaves her pen, tears the page in places in her rush. She squeezes her eyes shut. Stupid.

“Is that a letter?” she hears a voice ask from behind there, and even though she isn't doing anything wrong, anything forbidden, Ellie slams her notebook shut immediately.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to startle you,” the girl continues, and Ellie recognizes her as the girl that always sits some seats away from her in class. The girl with the deep dark skin and the starkly grey eyes, her smile so easy Ellie couldn’t help but stare, at times.

She would like to say she only noticed her because of all the times she had raised her hand, but the truth was that she was also one of the prettiest girls Ellie had ever seen- from a purely objective point of view, of course.

“It’s all good.”

She’s almost too used to fading in the background. She expects the girl to go away, now. She doesn’t. She sits next to her instead. “So, is it a letter?”

 _Yes_. 

“No.”

“Didn’t peg you for one of those who did their homework right before class.”

Ellie doesn’t know whether she should feel offended or not by that. “I’m not.”

“So you _are_ writing something else,” the girl finishes her syllogism with a triumphant grin. Ellie can’t help but smile back. A little.

“Are you majoring in criminology?”

The girl barks out what sounds like a genuine laugh, then. “You’re funny.”

And Ellie had been accused to be many things, but this was honestly a first. It hits her at that moment, that this girl doesn’t know her. At all. She almost smiles at the thought of it. 

And it hits her, too, that college meant an opportunity to be whatever she was meant to be, whatever she _wanted_ to be. An opportunity to be different for good reasons- and weird reasons, too, like writing letters in an age where texting exists. 

(It’s so freeing she could cry.)

“Yeah, sure. Funny, that’s me.”

The girl laughs again before that easy smile slips back around. 

It’s different from Aster’s. There’s no dimple for one, and it doesn’t travel across her whole face, doesn’t make her eyes sparkle in the right way.

(She wonders why comparing this girl to Aster had been her first thought.)

(She’s well aware of the reason, no matter how much she tries to fake obliviousness.)

“And who exactly are you?” the girl asks, breaking Ellie out of her reverie.

“I'm sorry?”

“You never gave me your name.”

“I'm Ellie Chu.”

The girl smiles and offers her hand. Ellie takes it. It’s warm. “Jaslin. Jaz.”

She’s saved from the horrors of trying to navigate small talk when her phone dings with a new uncompressible text filled with emoji from Paul. She can’t help the way her eyes roll automatically. 

“That your boyfriend?” Jaslin, Jaz nods to her phone, “He’s cute.”

“Oh, no! No. No, don’t have one,” Ellie says, and she watches as a dawning look comes unto the girl’s face- it could almost pass for recognition, Ellie thinks, “Just my best friend.”

Jaslin, Jaz smiles. “So, if the love letter isn't for the boyfriend…”

“It’s not a love letter,” Ellie denies too quickly, and Jaslin, Jaz’s smile turns as quickly into a smirk.

“Who is it for?”

“Nobody.”

“Sure.”

“She’s just a…” Ellie trails off and is saved from ending her sentence when the professor enters the classroom and starts to write without even waiting for them to pick up their pens.

She spends the first ten minutes of class trying to come up with the right word for what Aster is to her, anyway. Even though she shouldn’t even be trying to defend herself to some random girl in class. 

(Ellie knows how to put together words, but stories are sometimes hard to tell, to pin in place against reality.) 

(And she thinks she could spend a whole eternity trying to find words to describe Aster and fail.)

Jaslin, Jaz slips her number in Ellie’s phone after the class ends, with a promise to hang soon. Ellie refuses to admit Paul had been right even in the privacy of her head.

She calls him anyway.

“I met someone,” she tells Paul the moment he picks up, “You happy?”

“Yeah!” 

And he actually sounds so genuinely happy for her she drops the façade. 

“Not like _that_ ,” Ellie specifies- she doesn’t think she’s ready for someone like that, yet- “I don’t— But. Yeah.”

“That’s so cool,” Paul says, and Ellie can hear his smile. And she can imagine his grin, the way he would open his mouth, and his dimple stand out- the picture-perfect of a human golden retriever, really. 

She misses it. 

And she doesn’t want to hang up yet. “Yeah. She thinks you’re cute.”

“It was the smile, wasn’t it?”

Ellie lets out what many would consider a snort. She hangs up before Paul can comment on it.

He calls her back as soon as she does, and she can’t help the laugh that escapes her lips. She only hangs up again when she arrives at her next class.

(She doesn’t tell Paul that Aster had written to her. She doesn’t tell him she’s writing back.) 

(She doesn’t know what he’ll say, and that’s scarier than writing back to Aster could ever be.)

**

 **SmithCorona:** _Man is least himself when he talks in his own person._

She doesn’t have to wait much for a reply.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth._

 **DiegaRivero:** _…Why?_

 **SmithCorona:** _You disagree?_

 **DiegaRivero:** _No. But you have to admit it’s a weird way to start a conversation at 1 a.m._

And she’s right, but Ellie doesn’t know how to tell her why she’s quoting Wilde to her in the middle of the night.

 **SmithCorona:** _Too much room for thoughts._

**

Aster doesn’t reply until two days later.

That’s how Ellie learns that the road to survival is not mentioning the past.

(One step forward, two steps back.)

**

It ends up being a pretty regular letter if Ellie does say so herself. 

Like the ones they used to send once upon a time- without the dating aspect, of course. No declarations of a love she’s not even sure she does feel- or she's even supposed to feel, to begin with.

(She’s definitely used ‘feel’ too many times in that train of thought.)

Anyway, Ellie mails it and thinks that’s it.

And while the first letter from Aster had been unexpected, the second is even more so. 

She replies to that one too, and soon it’s like they had never stopped talking in the first place. Just like that, the weekly walks to her mailbox become more and more frequent, until she ends up checking it almost every day waiting for any response from Aster.

(Ellie will never admit to it, but she saves every letter, keeps each one in a box tucked under her bed.)

They keep texting, too. A lot. 

And love, Ellie _knows_ this, any form of love, is about effort. It’s about trying, and striving, and persistence, and- and Aster keeps writing to her. She can’t reconcile the two in her head without wanting to run towards her again.

She can’t.

(That kiss… it was the first- the second time she had been bold- or maybe impulsive is the right word. And it was so brief, no more than a few seconds, but Ellie could have sworn it had lasted centuries.)

(And Aster had kissed her back.)

Another thing Ellie knows is how easy it is to get burnt when someone ends up flying too close to the sun, especially if her wings were made of paper and wax.

Ellie keeps writing to her, anyway. It’s not like she could stop if she wanted to. 

And she doesn’t want to.

**

 **SmithCorona:** _Did you know the Greeks had a version of Noah’s ark, too?_

 **DiegaRivero:** _Heathen._

 **SmithCorona:** _You’re just mad your god wasn’t more original in his punishments._

**

Days start to pick up the pace as finals become nearer and nearer in the horizon.

She wishes that that meant she had stopped thinking about Aster in favour of studying, but apparently Ellie’s brain was oh, so very good at multitasking schoolwork with emotional suicide.

So, Ellie is stuck analysing each interaction, each letter, from any point of view possible, like she was back in high school and writing six different analysis of Sartre’s ‘No Exit’ for six different people.

(She really hopes she’s not getting graded on this, she’s never gotten a grade under a B in English and she’s not about to start now on imaginary assignments.)

And the piece of resistance was the hot springs, of course.

Ellie doesn’t know how to explain it, exactly, but that whole day had felt like stealing- or something very close to it.

Even now thinking about the hot springs felt like a long con she had been able to pull- and in more than one way, they were playing a long con on Aster, yes, but that day felt like stealing time from Paul, too. 

It felt extremely selfish. It felt like a small taste of what they could have had, if…

Aster had asked Ellie about God, and Ellie had told Aster about her mother, and Paul had kissed Aster.

And Aster had kissed him back.

And Aster had said a couple of years to her, then. And Aster keeps writing to her, now.

Maybe the worst thing, after all, is how Ellie doesn’t quite care _why_ Aster is writing to her now. 

Maybe the worst thing, after all, is how Ellie just wants to take what she can, from her. 

Maybe the worst thing is, after all, how Ellie thought she was growing up so much in college, but when Aster was involved she went right back to being the same girl desperate for one person, just one person who’d get her.

And she hates it.

She _hates_ it.

She hates most of all how it doesn’t matter, anyway, because Ellie was here, and Aster was miles away.

(She hates how she doesn’t mean it.)

**

 **SmithCorona:** _Just two weeks away from lovely Squahamish_

 **DiegaRivero:** _I’ll tell my father to hide the crosses._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Wouldn’t want you to burn while strolling._

 **SmithCorona:** _How considerate of you._

**

She doesn’t want to do this. 

She breathes in deep.

She really doesn’t want to do this. 

She squeezes her eyes shut as hard as she can, trying not to focus on her heart playing the drums against her rib cage. She sighs again. Her phone buzzes in her pocket.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Good luck on your final._

Ellie walks in with a smile.

**

She has never felt more relieved than the second she steps out of the classroom after finishing her last exam.

She has never dreaded a moment as much either.

“Ready?” Jaz asks, her arm slipping onto her shoulder.

She shrugs her off, trying her best to copy Paul’s best pouty face. “Do we really have to?”

Jaz doesn’t budge, and it truly doesn’t work without his puppy dog eyes, does it? Or maybe Ellie’s face just isn’t made for pleading like his is. She likes that reason better.

“Okay, but we go when I say we do.”

“Whatever you want,” Jaz agrees, nodding quickly, and Ellie feels like she just made a huge mistake, “C’ mon we gotta change.”

“Why?”

“Because _girls_ will be there,” Jaz says this time entwining their arms together and starting to more or less drag her towards her dorm.

“And?”

Jaz sighs, shaking her head. “And for as much as you like to pretend you’re not in a relationship, some of us aren’t so lucky. And you have to be supportive of me finding love.”

“My company isn’t enough for you anymore?” Ellie frees her arm to put it against her chest, faking one of Jaz’s own signature numbers- melodramatic idiot.

It’s all worth it just for the affronted look on Jaz’s face. She smirks and Jaz’s shakes her head, though she can’t hide the twinkle of amusement in her eyes before she rolls them.

“Never was, Chu. C’mon!”

Ellie let’s out a laugh and lets Jaz drag her back to her dorm.

**

Turns out, college parties weren’t all that different from high school ones.

Not that she had much experience in the latter, but. Still. Not that different.

It’s drinks and a house full of people and music pumping through the walls.

And Jaz and her friends had to teach Ellie how to play beer pong- and yes, she did decimate them, after they did- but she had to teach Drinkers of Catan to them, too.

It’s fun like that one party had been, but it’s also better because Jaz’s laughter fills the small room, and she can laugh too, and nobody is watching them, or their weird mitch match of friends.

She misses something about high school parties, though.

She leaves her cup on the first flat surface she sees and clumsily shoves her hand in her pockets, searching for her phone.

 **SmithCorona:** _The vry essence of romanc is uncertnty._

It doesn’t take long for Aster to answer.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Wilde again?_

 **DiegaRivero:** _And are you drunk?_

She frowns at the text. Looks back to the one she sent. Ops. She types carefully her next message.

 **SmithCorona:** _This qualifies as tipsy at best._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Sure._

She’s about to text something else when a girl bumps into her, almost making her phone fly out of her hand. She shrugs the girl’s apologies off and makes her way out of the house and into the backyard. 

When she looks back down at the phone, Aster has already written back.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Where are you?_

 **SmithCorona:** _Some guy’s house._

She watches Aster type, and type, and type.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Since when do you go to parties?_

 **SmithCorona:** _Jaz insisted._

**DiegaRivero:** _Oh Jaz, of course._

And Ellie may be drunker than she thought because Aster really does sound jealous of Jaz, for a second. She discards the thought before it could further damage her sanity. 

She takes a step back, leaning back against the brick wall.

 **SmithCorona:** _Yeah._

And she doesn’t want the conversation to end.

 **SmithCorona:** _My last final was today._

 **DiegaRivero:** _I know._

(Love is memory, isn’t it?)

(Yeah, she’s definitely too drunk.)

She waits for another text, but it doesn’t come. 

She closes her eyes.

The noise of the party seems nothing compared to her own hearth drumming a beat against her ribcage. 

What were they doing?

(Just because it isn't spoken, it doesn’t mean it isn't there.)

What was she doing?

**

She doesn’t hear from Aster until two days later when she’s already on the train going back to Squahamish- they don’t celebrate Christmas, exactly, but she couldn’t bear to leave her father alone when she knew already she wouldn't manage to get home for Chinese New Year. And she was starting to miss Paul more than she thought she’d ever do, too.

Anyway, sleeping on a train was exactly as comfortable as Ellie had remembered. That is to say, not at all. 

(She did score a people free compartment this time, though, so there's that.)

(Small victories.)

Ellie had never been the best example of a healthy sleep schedule on the best of days, but this was pushing it even for her standards. But at least, she can distract herself with Aster.

And, in retrospect, starting conversations with Aster that span into late nights isn’t Ellie’s most brilliant habit, but, in her defence, it always starts kind of light.

It always ends with Ellie asking Aster some less than careful questions. A bold stroke after a bold stroke.

 **SmithCorona:** _What’s your favourite thing?_

 **DiegaRivero:** _My ‘best part’?_

(Love is remembering.)

Ellie smiles down at her phone, despite herself- every reaction she has to Aster seems to be despite herself.

 **SmithCorona:** _Yeah._

 **DiegaRivero:** _When I read a book, and it’s sunny out, and I can see the texture of the paper._

 **SmithCorona:** _Sunlight has a way of making everything too real._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Yeah._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Exactly._

She watches the dots near her name, type and type and type. It takes a minute before Aster seems to settle on what she wants to say.

 **DiegaRivero:** _What’s yours?_

 _Reading your texts first thing in the morning._ She shakes her head. Lifts her glasses to push her hands to her eyes until she sees stars expanding against black. Stupid. 

**SmithCorona:** _I don’t know._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Coward._

 **SmithCorona:** _Not everyone can come up with poetry on the spot._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Flattery won’t make me forget you still owe me an answer._

 **SmithCorona:** _Why do you want to know so bad?_

Aster takes so long to reply Ellie almost sets the phone back down to try and fall asleep. The phone buzzes the moment it takes her to close her eyes. She snaps them back open.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Attention is the beginning of devotion._

She doesn’t know this one. She focuses on that, instead of the meaning behind the words.

 **SmithCorona:** _Who said that?_

 **DiegaRivero:** _Me._

 **DiegaRivero:** _AndMary Oliver._

She knows the name, though. Jaz had shown her a book of her poetry once before class had started. She remembers thinking how Aster would have loved it- she was right, apparently. 

And she remembers a line, too.

 **SmithCorona:** _I saw what love might have done had we loved in time._

She knows she did something wrong the moment she hits send. But she can’t take it back. She won’t. Not when it was the most honest she had been in a while. 

And then she just stares at her screen waiting for the answer. 

She knows that even though the text reads unopen, Aster has read it. It was what she did too when she didn't want to answer a text. Just stared at it without opening it. Then three dots appear and disappear. Appear, disappear. Like a weird dance, she doesn't know the name of.

She’s ready to throw her phone out of the train window when it starts ringing.

It’d been weird, how easy it was to fall back into writing to Aster. 

She doesn’t think she’s ready to hear her voice again yet though, so she doesn’t know what to make of it when she looks down on her phone and sees Aster’s name flashing back. She answers it anyway.

“Why did you keep writing them? The letters?”

 _For the same reason I keep writing to you now,_ Ellie wants to say, _I_ _can't let go of you and I never could_.

Or maybe: _Why did you ever start writing to me again, i_ _f you didn't know the answer to this question already?_

Ellie, though, knows all too well Aster doesn't want the truth from her. At least not this kind. And Ellie supposes that it would all be easier if she didn't want desperately to keep Aster in any and all the ways, all the capacities, Aster allowed her to. 

She decides that answering her in half truths is the only way to do so.

“I— it was only supposed to be one letter. I needed the money,” she adds when Aster stays quiet, “And then I wrote them for him.”

“But they were your letters, your words. And you didn’t need to keep at it, after.”

(Or easier still, if Aster was yelling at her, if she was screaming. Ellie almost can’t handle how composed she sounds, instead.)

Ellie doesn’t know what Aster means with after- if she means now, if she means then. 

“No. Not my words.”

(And that’s a bit of a lie, but she’s so fond of hidden truths she wouldn’t want to break her habit now.)

“No? I didn’t recognize any other than Win Wenders, that one time,” and Ellie can’t make out if Aster is mocking her or scolding her anymore, “Did you make someone else write them for you too? Was it a whole operation?”

“It was only supposed to be one letter,” she says again, the half truth coming out even weaker than the first time, and Aster relentless still- she wonders if Aster know what she's asking, after all.

“So you wrote them for yourself.”

But, maybe. Maybe Ellie _should_ be honest. Maybe she should stop compromising what she means- what she is- in hopes of something she knows will never come true. She owes it to herself just as much as she owes it to Aster- maybe even more.

“I wrote them for you, Aster."

The silence after could deafen her. She almost checks if Aster’s still there, but she can _feel_ she is- it’s a bit uncanny if she’s being honest. 

She waits.

She’d give anything to see her face, see if she’s angry, upset, if she’s folding her arms- holding onto herself. Or maybe if she…

“It was cruel,” Aster whispers in the end.

She tries not to wince. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice, eventually?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs and shakes her head though Aster cannot see it, “I thought you wouldn’t _want_ to notice.”

The only answer she gets is the white noise of a phone call going silent once again. She wonders if Aster had taken it as an admonition, an accusation. She wonders how she herself had meant it.

“You know I can’t—”

And Ellie knows, then, how she's lost her gamble.

Sometimes, bold strokes don't pay off as you want them to.

“I know,” and, because she doesn’t want Aster to think Ellie begrudges her for not being able to give her something impossible, she adds, “You’re a good person, Aster Flores.”

Aster scoffs, a foreign sound coming from her mouth. “Liar.”

“Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” Aster doesn’t even pretend to hesitate, and Ellie tries not to let it get to her, “I think you would.”

“Okay, fair. You’re still a good person. Believe me I…” she trails off, before sighing.

“What?”

She can’t finish that sentence and stay unbroken. She can’t _not_ finish it either.

No more compromising over this.

“I didn’t think I was going to end up liking you this much.”

She hears Aster take in a breath through her teeth. “Oh.”

“You wanted honesty,” Ellie tells her, but still the words she wants to say most die on her lips, unuttered, unspoken.

 _Did you leave,_ she still wants to ask, _I found the door open and I left it open for you. Are you coming with me? Did you leave?_

“I did,” Aster whispers, and she sounds so _sad_ Ellie knows she won’t bear to hear the end of that sentence spoken aloud, that she won't survive it if she does, “And I want—”

No, she really cannot hear what Aster is about to say. 

“The moment right before a kiss ends,” Ellie rushes out, interrupting her, “That’s my best part.”

And she can’t hear what Aster could be about to say now, too.

She hangs up the phone.

**

She calls Paul right after. It takes him three rings to answers.

“Munsky’s Taco Sausage,” he mumbles in his phone, his voice gravelly like he was fast asleep before answering- and only then does Ellie realize it’s well past two am where he is.

“Is this how you answer your phone now?”

“Ellie!”

There’s a strange sort of warmth that spreads through her body when his voice lights up as he says her name. “Hey, number eighty-six.”

“It’s late. You didn’t call in a while.”

“I know,” she winces at the hurt tinting his words, “I’m sorry. Finals. I’ m only four days away, though.”

Paul yawns on the other end of the phone. “Yeah. You’re forgiven. So what’s up?”

“So, I—” Ellie takes a deep breath before blurting it out, “Do you regret it?”

“What?”

“The letters. Aster,” she tries to explain, she shakes her head with a sigh.

“Aster,” he agrees, this time sounding far less asleep, “And asking for your help?”

_Loving her._

“Yes.”

“Yes. No. I—” 

He stops. 

It takes a minute before he answers again, and when he does, his words seem careful, thought out. 

“No. I feel like I was kidding myself for the longest time. You know, when we went on that date, the one we prepped so hard on. I don’t know. It felt, like, wrong and right at the same time.”

“Pretending.”

Paul sighs on the other end of the line. “Yeah. You know you’re my… we’re best friend, right?”

“Yeah,” and it feels like relief, knowing he feels like that too, about her, “Yeah, we’re best friends.”

“Are you… do you feel responsible, about it?” Paul asks, and it’s weird how she had never thought of it in matters of responsibility before. Guilt, yes. Though weren’t the two connect in more than one way?

(Just because it isn't spoken, it doesn’t mean it isn't there.)

She shakes her head, tells the truth. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Paul stays quiet and Ellie does too. She enjoys the small sounds she can hear from the other side, the way the air was still in her compartment, but she could still feel the movement of the train.

(The moon never stopped her chasing.)

(Ellie tries not to elaborate on that thought, much.) 

Silences with Paul were rare, but they were never uncomfortable, never bad. She thinks of riding her bike to school as Paul jogs beside her. 

No, never bad.

“You should tell her,” Paul breaks the stillness of the night again.

And Ellie was never too good at playing dumb, but she gives it a try anyway. “Tell her what?”

“Dude,” Paul drawls out, slow but a bit exasperated, “You know.”

She does.

“I don’t think I will.”

“Well, that’d be a shame.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

**

She doesn’t meet up with Aster when she finally makes it back home for winter break.

She tells herself she’s not disappointed.

**

She waits for a letter. 

A text. 

They don’t come. 

And Ellie knew she had made a mistake the moment she had stated plainly- well, kind of- what she wanted, but she didn’t think she’d miss the letters so much.

She wonders how it would have been, if she had dared to speak in those months, before the church, maybe even before the locker room. She wonders if Aster would have kissed her back then, too.

It takes almost half a semester for Jaz to pick up on the fact she and Aster aren’t talking anymore.

(Not that Ellie has stopped writing to her exactly- only she has another box under her bed, now, full of every unsent one.)

Ellie knows this, because Jaz starts asking her about Aster once a day for a week, and then twice, and then when Ellie’s monosyllabic answers don’t satisfy her anymore, she pesters her until she gets the whole story out of her.

And to Jaz’s credit she doesn’t try to give Ellie any advice on the situation, just tries her best to distract her from it.

That’s how Jaz’s Circus of Distractions- that’s how Ellie’s sure it’s called in Jaz’s mind, at least- starts.

It involves study sessions, movie nights, and ice cream run at midnight like they were in some weird coming of age movie, themselves.

One night, Jaz tries to drag her to another party, but she still doesn’t like parties all that much, not how Jaz does anyway. 

So, she declines the invite with a deadpan joke that makes Jaz laugh and leave her in her room alone without another try and with the promise to come back around later. 

As soon as Jaz closes the door behind her, she takes out one of her father’s tea bags, snuck by him inside her bag when she had come back. She shakes her head with a sigh. 

(She wonders if they’ll ever learn how to speak their love out loud to each other.)

(She wonders if they even need to when they understand it so well.)

It’s quiet.

It’s quiet in a way that makes her homesick. Even straining, she can’t hear the sound of any nearby parties. It’s also quiet in a way that makes her want to think of Aster, and since she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to anymore, she ends up writing to her instead. 

She doesn’t know if she’ll send it, though. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever send another letter to Aster.

Then she hears a knock on her door.

She sets her pen down with a sigh and she stands up. She starts to speak before she opens the door.

“Isn't it a bit early for you to be bac—” she lifts her eyes and clamps her mouth shut.

“You should really look before opening your door, you never know what kind of sinners lurk in the night.”

She’s sure she looks like a proper moron, right about now, blinking at Aster Flores on her doorstep. 

Aster Flores who looks different, still long brown hair but a bit shorter, a bit lighter in colour like she had spent long days in the sun; still wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but they’re ripped and paint-stained- her eyes look the same, though, sweet and kind and deep. 

And Aster looks happier, too, like she has to hide less. 

(She wonders if she looks as different to Aster.)

(She wonders if Aster would even begin to notice that about her.)

She’s sure she sounds like a proper moron as she opens her mouth. 

“I thought you said a couple of years.”

“Got tired of waiting,” Aster smiles and slips into the room in one smooth move, she smiles as she turns the room around, before nodding towards the desk, “That for me?”

Ellie’s mouth stops working as Aster picks up the paper in her hands. “I—”

“There’s my name on it.”

“Fancy that,” she croaks out, her words coming out much more strained than she meant them to.

Aster laughs, and the world stops in its tracks to listen. 

(Or at least that’s how it feels.)

She snatches her letter back. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Really, how she was still surprised by Aster's spur of the moment decisions was a mystery. She should expect this, by now.

Aster doesn’t even seem to pay attention to her words, her eyes jumping around the dorm room like she’s filling in all the dots on who Ellie is as a college student. Her eyes seem to linger on the three pictures on her desk, and Ellie makes use of her distraction to shove the letter in her pocket.

“Waiting,” Aster finally answers her.

“For a sign again?”

“No, I think I know what I’m meant to do now.”

Ellie nods along to the words- even though she’s not following, _at all._ She doesn’t know what she’s meant to say. It’s disconcerting, really, how Ellie could text her for hours without ever stopping and yet she’s still so unused to her presence.

_Say something, Ellie. Say. Something._

Aster saves her from her panic attack. “So, did you ever find something good to believe in?”

“Not really,” she shrugs, training her eyes on the floor because she’s not sure she’s allowed to say. She wonders what would happen if she said ‘you’.

Aster stops looking around the room to fix her eyes on her. “Not even love?”

“Love is overrated,” Ellie says like she’s not talking to the one person who had made her reconsider her stance on it. She’s a hypocrite like that.

“Really? Is that the boldest stroke you can make?”

It surprises Ellie enough she meets Aster’s eyes again. “Now who’s the one plagiarizing?”

Aster lets out that same silver laugh that had resonated in that movie theatre what feels like centuries ago, the sound stark clear against the screams. And just like that time, it’s the only sound Ellie can hear.

“I was trying to be cute,” Aster huffs another giggle, before smiling. 

The pretty girl smile. 

(She’s not conceited.)

The pretty girl smile that had made both Paul and Ellie stop in their tracks, for as much Ellie had denied it. She doesn’t understand why Aster would want to try and be cute when she already was the prettiest girl Ellie’s ever seen. 

And Ellie’s mouth always tastes like snow-white cotton under Aster’s attentive stare. 

She swallows. “Cute?”

The smile slips a bit at the corners and Ellie feels the irrational need to say something, anything, to bring it back at full force. She doesn’t blink. She can’t blink. “I lied. That day.”

“What?”

“That day, I lied. About how I— I thought about it a lot. About you. Not just now but before too. And things are different, now. Aren’t they?”

Ellie can’t help the way her eyes widen at that, just as she can’t help furrowing her brows when Aster’s smile slips off completely, all at once.

“Oh. I’m such an idiot.”

“You could never be an idiot,” Ellie blurts out, almost on autopilot, not understanding why.

Aster huffs what probably isn't meant to be a laugh. It doesn’t sound like one, anyway, hollow and not at all joyful. “I missed it. God, I… I’m so stupid, thinking you’d wait forever just because of some stupid letters, and then I ghosted you for months and I’m so sorry about—”

Now if Ellie could just say something clever, now, instead of continuing to blink her eyes, it’d be great.

(Love makes you screwy, she hears Paul say in her head, and she really owes him an apology.)

And it’s all wrong because this wasn’t meant to be a love story and Ellie knew that. She did. So why was Aster breaking off script? Why did she look… heartbroken? And why was Ellie still struggling for words?

(She owes so many apologies to Paul, this is hard.)

“You didn’t,” she blurts again, her voice barely rasping out over Aster’s rant- she rants when she’s nervous, Ellie remembers, and she almost smiles- “You’re not stupid I just…”

(Oh, this is _hard_.)

“I can quote myself. Now,” she says in the end, she curls her fingers into fists, her nails digging into her palm, she swallows when Aster’s eyes pierce hers, “Could do so for a while.”

“What?”

“I liked you, Aster. And I think I’ve liked you for a long time, even when I couldn’t let myself _think_ about liking you. And I kept wondering what would have happened, if we told you the truth, sooner.”

Aster’s smile reappears slowly, like the sun peeking through the clouds after a summer shower. “You did catfish me, yes.”

“Yeah, I… I am sorry about that.”

“I’m sorry about the ghosting.”

“We’re even now?”

And Aster’s smile splits her whole face in two, now. And Ellie has never been more aware of another person’s smile, or general mannerisms as much she is of Asters. 

“I like how you don’t know what emojis mean. I like how you made me want to be more. I like how when I think of my name, I hear your voice calling me.”

“I don’t understand,” Ellie says, even if her heart has sped up already in wonder, even if Aster smiles so softly Ellie is almost afraid it could break her.

“I think you do.”

“Tell me anyway?”

Aster looks at her then, for long enough Ellie wants to start fidgeting in place, before surging forward and sealing their lips together.

(How do you know she wants to be kissed?)

Not unlike their first kiss, Ellie finds herself thinking, before any other thought that isn't Aster- Aster’s lips against hers, and the way Aster’s playing with the baby hair at the base of Ellie’s neck, and the way her own fingers dig in the soft spot of Aster’s hips- flies right out of her head.

“I love you,” Aster breathes out when they break the kiss for long enough that words can be heard again.

Ellie can’t help kissing her again, then.

She moves one of her hands to cup her cheek, bringing down her chin slightly. She feels Aster sigh into the softer kiss- the first where they didn’t just smash their faces together and hoped for the best- and Ellie echoes the sentiment, drawing her in even more.

She wants to be closer and closer. She may never be close enough.

And it's not being made whole, but like warmth seeping into her body, like molasses melting in her insides. It's not being made whole but becoming something new all the same. It's shaping each other into something better, together.

It's Aster and it's Ellie.

It's much better than being made whole could ever be.

“Best part,” Aster mumbles against her lips, and Ellie wants to laugh, and she wants to cry. 

Mostly she just wants to keep kissing her.

(So much of their love has been waiting, and now Ellie wants to take her time.)

**

There’s a knock on her door because of course there is.

They manage to ignore it until Jaz’s voice comes through the door. “C’ mon Chu, I know you’re there. I promised I would have been back to kiss you goodnight.”

She feels Aster tense in her arms. 

“She’s kidding,” she rushes out, holding onto her as if her life depended on it, “I. We… aren’t like that. At all.”

She doesn’t like the way Aster’s smile has shrunk down. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. She makes fun of me, because of you.”

“Why?”

And Ellie can see the way Aster’s smile has come back around, and she knows exactly what she’s fishing for. She was never one to back down before a challenge, though.

“Because I—”

Another bang against her door interrupts her. “Oi, Chu!”

“Go away!” she yells, burying her face in Aster’s neck. She can feel Aster’s laugh against her skin, the slight shaking of her shoulders. It’s a weird kind of thing to be happy about.

“What? You got company?”

“She does, actually,” Aster answers, her voice loud and clear, before Ellie can stop her.

Ellie hits her forehead gently against Aster’s shoulder. “Oh, now you’ve done it.”

The knocking stops abruptly, only for her phone to start buzzing two seconds later, so hard it falls from her desk and- thankfully- ends up in a pile of dirty clothes.

(Had she known Aster was coming, she’d have cleaned that up.)

(Probably.)

“I think it’s best I open the door.”

“Maybe,” Aster agrees, and it’s playful in a way Ellie could only remember from their early letters addressed to Paul, from the very first Aster had addressed to her. 

Flirting, she realizes. This brand of playful teasing is Aster’s way of flirting.

She hopes her face isn’t as red as it feels.

She scurries off to the door quickly.

“You complete moron,” Jaz hisses as soon as the door is opened, and she might be drunker than Ellie thought, “What about letter girl? You’re going to break her heart like that?”

“Jaz.”

“No. Don’t you Jaz me. I have not stood by and watched you pine and write letters for a whole semester and a half—”

“Hello,” Aster smiles as she walks to the door, lifting a hand into the air, the other curling around Ellie’s hips- the touch _burns_ her through the layers of shirt and flannel she has on, and now she’s sure she is as red as she feels. 

“Letter girl,” Aster continues when Jaz only stands there, looking her up and down, “Sometimes, I go by Aster.”

And okay, Ellie is a big enough person she can admit that watching Jaz’s mouth fall open and close a few times is pretty funny and almost worth the interruption. “Hi. I’m Jaslin. Jaz. And I… am going to go.”

“Bye Jaz,” Aster calls after her.

“Don’t be a dick.”

Aster’s lips fall into the perfect pout. “After all the effort it took me to get here, you call me a dick.”

Ellie may roll her eyes a bit. She bends down to find her phone, throwing her clothes under the bed while she was at it. “If the shoe fits. How _did_ you get here, by the way?”

“I got a Lyft, then a train, then a Lyft again.”

Ellie stops and looks at her. She opens her mouth. Then closes it.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “You’re always so dramatic, god.”

“Hey!”

“The hot springs, the slap, the choir…” Ellie trails off, smiling when Aster huffs and rolls her eyes.

“C’ mon, now. The choir?”

“Always up, front and centre,” Ellie explains, now openly smirking, “Charming the masses.”

Aster rolls her eyes again. “You can tease all you want, but I know you can be pretty good at stealing the scene, too.”

“Oh yeah?” Ellie stands up- and she’s never noticed until now how, when Aster shakes her head in disbelief, her curls dance hypnotically- she swallows, “How?”

“You act as if you didn’t sing for the whole school, that time.”

“You weren’t even there!”

Aster’s face turns into the smuggest kind of fake sorrow Ellie had ever seen, as she saunters towards her. “I’m sorry to inform you, you’re internet famous in Squahamish, Ellie.”

She doesn’t know if it’s the words coming out of Aster’s mouth that unsettle her more or the vision that is Aster slowly stalking her way towards Ellie.

“What?”

Aster laces their fingers together, mindlessly. Ellie is still too caught up to register it with the gay panic it deserved. “Trig posted you on his Instagram story.”

“What?”

Aster lets out a full laugh, before leaving a peck to her lips.

It doesn’t seem to matter, at that moment, the fact Aster is teasing her within an inch of her life, the fact Ellie is apparently an internet sensation back in Squahamish, the fact Ellie’s heart is going a mile an hour.

That might just be because Aster is holding her hand, though.

Or the kiss.

Ellie’s eyes stray to Aster’s mouth, her tongue darting out to wet her lips subconsciously.

(Yeah, definitely _not_ the kiss.)

(Definitely.)

“Why did you do that?” and she sounds breathless to her own ears. God, she needs to get a grip.

“Why not?”

And well, she really cannot argue against this logic, so she wraps one of her arms around her neck as Ellie draws Aster in, this time.

**

After some kissing, Ellie’s realization that Aster is an impulsive dumbass who literally didn’t plan _anything_ beyond coming to Grindell, and some more kissing, they settle down, balancing in Ellie’s single bed- who was truly not meant for two people, but it only really becomes another reason to hold on more- lingering in that state in between dream and reality.

It’s quiet.

It’s nice.

(It’s everything Ellie had never had the chance to feel before.)

“That time in the hallway,” Aster starts all of the sudden, her hands reaching for Ellie’s like she couldn’t stop herself from touching her otherwise.

She resists the urge to bury her face into them. “God, I must have seemed such an idiot.”

“No,” Aster smiles, and it’s too kind. Ellie tugs at her hands. Aster laughs. “Well yeah, a bit. But I—I didn’t know why, but I kept rambling—”

“You rant when you’re nervous.”

Aster’s smile turns so bright at Ellie’s interruption and then bursts into a small giggle. “Yeah. I wanted you to talk to me.”

Ellie scrunches up her nose. “Why?”

“You were…” Aster trails off, untangling one of her hands and waving it in the air, “Different.”

She catches her hand back. “Yeah.”

“No. Well, that too,” Aster adds, before shaking her head, her hair falling in front of her eyes- Ellie wants to brush them back behind her ear- “I meant, I’ve read one or two of your English papers.”

“You did?”

“Trig had a way too high average in that class,” Aster explains.

“So, you wanted to talk to me because I wrote your ex-boyfriend’s homework?”

“You have a way,” Aster says- very fucking cryptically, in Ellie’s opinion.

“A way?”

“When you look at people…” Aster huffs a half laugh, shaking her head and looking away from her, “You focus on them. I don’t know how to explain it, but you make me feel seen. And I wanted that.”

“And now?”

Aster takes her hand in hers, brushing her thumb over her knuckles. “Now I just want you.”

“Oh,” Ellie can feel herself turn a patchy kind of red, “No big deal?”

“Hardly so,” Aster disagrees, kissing her quickly- Ellie’s eyes flutter close just as quickly, and she wants to chase her lips again, but Aster is already gone, “What do _you_ want?”

And she could be romantic now, say something like they would in the movies. 

_I want to take your hand and bring you to my favourite secret places,_ she could say, _all of them, all mine, all yours._

 _I want to let you see me,_ she could say, _and I want to let you love me, and I want you to want to still love me after._

She says: “A taco sausage.”

Aster’s laugh resonates in her small dorm, and Ellie doesn’t think she’s ever felt like this, ever. She feels the kind of happy she used to feel when her mother was still alive. She feels bad for even thinking it.

“I read what you wrote about Plato’s Symposium,” Aster picks back up.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Forever longing,” Aster mocks lightly, her smile curling around the edges and showing off her dimples. It’s kind of distracting if Ellie were to be honest.

Ellie shakes it off and smirks back. “Uh uh. Says ‘all that barely repressed longing’ girl.”

“Fair,” Aster concedes, “Do you know how to say soulmate in Spanish?”

“No.”

“Alma gemela,” Aster’s voice so close to her skin makes her break in shivers, “Do you know what it means?”

“Soulmate,” Ellie can’t help but deadpan.

“No!” Aster laughs again- and it's silver and light and sits heavy behind Ellie's eyelids like fireworks when she closes her eyes- slapping her gently on her arm, “I meant literally.”

“Okay. What does it mean, _literally_?”

“Don’t tease.”

“Am not! So?” she reaches to adjust gently one of Aster’s stray curls behind her ear again. It's unbelievably soft, Aster's hair.

Aster doesn’t let her have it, scrunching her nose but she leans into her touch anyway, so Ellie counts it as a small battle won. Ellie huffs, but she too can’t keep the façade for very long when Aster is oh, so close. 

“C’ mon, I’m asking nicely. What does it mean?”

Aster stares her down for another few seconds, before finally answering. “It means twin souls.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“That’s how…” she shakes her head, and she doesn’t think she could begin to explain what she’s thinking, “Do you believe in soulmates then?”

“I do. Not in the becoming whole sense, though.”

“No,” Ellie agrees, “More like companionship.”

Aster’s smiles so wide Ellie wonders if it hurts. “Yeah. Like understanding.”

“The one who knows your self,” she blurts out before she can think of it.

Aster’s eyes flash back to her. "What?"

And she doesn’t know why she speaks again, but her next words are something she’d have never said out loud, before, “Seventeen.”

(Love is memory.)

“What?”

Aster does that thing with her eyebrow that Ellie has always liked a bit too much.

“The song playing in your car that day,” Ellie continues, “Seventeen.”

(Love is understanding, too.)

“You laugh watching horror movies. And you paint like you’re terrified. Like you’re being saved by it, too. And you used to look golden, at 8 a.m. during Choir.”

Aster lets out a small bubbling laugh. “Golden?”

Ellie doesn’t laugh, her eyes serious as she watches her. “Golden.”

Aster’s laugh evaporates from her lips, her eyes focusing on Ellie’s lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Aster kisses her softly.

(They don’t speak much after that.)

**

Unfortunately, Aster still has to go back to art school, eventually, and Ellie has to send her off only two days after she showed up at her door. 

Aster leaves with promises of summer break together and a road trip, and Ellie cannot seem to find it in herself to be so disappointed when the semester is already almost over.

And there’s letters and texts and maybe Skype, if Ellie finds herself so unbearably lonely.

(Waiting is not as bitter when she knows there someone waiting with her.)

When she steps back into her dorm, she notices the lack of Aster’s presence as if she had been here for weeks, and not just a few days. It’s in the two mugs left on her desk and in the mess that is her bed. It’s in the distinct lack of the paint smell Aster’s clothes gave off at times.

Ellie knows she’s a goner the moment she actually finds herself missing the _paint_ smell.

She closes the door behind her, resting her head on the wood with a sigh. Her phone buzzes in her pocket.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Hey._

She smiles.

 **SmithCorona:** _Hey._

 **DiegaRivero:** _I miss you._

She smiles wider.

 **SmithCorona:** _You just left._

 **DiegaRivero:** _I know._

It feels like she's underwater, a bit. 

It feels like she’s in a dream. She actually considers for a second to pinch her skin to check as if she was living in some cheesy movie her dad would make her watch.

 **SmithCorona:** _When I go away from you the world beats dead._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Now who’s the dramatic one?_

 **DiegaRivero:** _Also that’s too cheesy._

 **SmithCorona:** _You love me._

 **DiegaRivero:** _I do._

Yeah, this was something worth waiting for.

**Author's Note:**

> first thing first, give it up for ms danielle that told me that yes, writing this was a good idea (take all complaints to her pls), also let's hear it for mume who sent me songs til i found a good title. the true heroes of my story, really.
> 
> second thing second, felt kinda weird not writing about rainbow lesbian and her gf goth witch for once, but ms wu deserves this and many better fics im not able to provide.
> 
> as always a round of applause for any kudos or comment left, and do hit me up on tumblr @somniatoressinespe i swear i wont bite.
> 
> cheers!


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